Strange Sights, Strange Things

I guess this was the first strange sight of our week and you have to agree, it is pretty strange! It was Kim's birthday and out here in the bush, a special occasion is only as exciting as you make it. So...we pulled out all the stops. The party kazoos (that's what I'm told they are), were especially fun. Their uses know no bounds. Just ask Kim who decided to use hers to blow out her candles. It was hilariously funny, but I think you had to be there:)
Here's another strange sight that wasn't nearly as funny.

In fact, it wasn't funny at all. Our desktop, which has been my lifeline since the loss of my laptop, somehow got infected by a virus, a trojan and a worm. At least that's my understanding of what was seriously "bugging" my computer, and me! I phoned a few people in the know (before I figured out what was wrong) and they thought the computer likely had a hardware problem. They suggested that I unseat then reseat the motherboard and, whatever else, I don't quite recall. I've never touched the inside of a computer in my life before so this was quite a big step for me. They also suggested I try to clean it out inside, which I did. I've cleaned before, so that was no big deal :P I managed to do all this without permanently damaging anything, but it only produced a temporary fix. Aaaagggghhh! Solution #2 was to solicit the help of our son, Russell. He recommended I download a different antivirus program (Avast) which located no less than 51 infected files on our system. The long and short of it is that even Avast couldn't permanently heal the infection, so Francois is helping us take more drastic measures like reformatting the hard drive. 

What I find really strange about all this is the fact that computers, like humans, get "viruses", are referred to as "infected", and need to be "healed". You'd think the computer geeks of the world could have come up with some more technical terms for electronic troubles! One thing is for sure, we can certainly all relate to these ones.
Centering the door frame in my future office was another challenge this week. That's because the doorway is situated at an angle across a corner. I'm sure that sounds confusing, but I decided to do it that way to #1 eliminate an otherwise imposing corner that jutted out into the front room and #2 because I thought it would look nice. It was a very confusing concept for the brick layers. Doors are supposed to go on flat stretches of walls. Putting one on a corner is just, well, strange. Thankfully, in Dwight's absence, Rick came to the rescue and got things on track again.

I was very excited to see this small part of our house nearing completion this week. It's the basement...sort of. We don't really have basements in Africa, so I guess that makes this an oddity in its own right. Because we built on sloping ground, the one side of the house needed alot of back-filling with dirt. This space is the area under a portion of the veranda and would have required around 35 cubic meters to fill! After some consideration, we decided that rather than try to move that much earth one wheelbarrow-full at a time, we'd just keep the cavity and finish it off as a little crawl space to use for storage.

Storage space comes at a premium here and you should see the line-up of boxes of used clothing, medical supplies, etc. waiting for this little room to be ready. A quaint little door has since been hung in the doorway, air vents are in place, next job is a coat of paint to help brighten things up and, voila! At least part of the house will soon begin to fulfill its purpose.

Awhile back, I blogged about a young man who was blind and in need of a brailler so he could keep up with his schoolwork once he started attending a nearby school. Someone graciously responded to this need and now he's in his element. Looks like his classmates are in theirs too. As we snapped photos indoors, throngs school kids jockeyed for best position to peer through the windows at us while those inside could hardly contain their excitement over the visit (mostly it was the presence of cameras). One group of boys even offered to dance for us but their teacher put a quick end to that bright thought. This was, after all, a school. There was schoolwork to be done.

I just had to throw this one in here because it's cute. Kim and one of the orphan children making friends.

I try to keep reptiles in the last paragraph, so here we go. This last picture is really the strangest sight this past week, even stranger than us all dressed up in party hats and masks. This is a pair of Twig Snakes, the Mozambican species, mating. I've never witnessed anything like this before in all my years here. Perhaps more disconcerting than the fact that they were superbly disguised among the twigs of this tree, is the fact that they were making more of their own kind! This is a very poisonous snake.

I guess I'll sign off here for this time. Dwight returned this week from a 10 day trip north holding leadership seminars. He returned with some exciting stories (click here) which he has written up. So if you read this before the link is in place, don't forget to check back.

TTYL

Putting it on paper and celebrating

We drew quite the crowds as we went to deliver monthly food supplies to orphan homes in surrounding communities this week. Well, we always seem to draw crowds since we are rather an oddity. I’m sure what added to the usual attraction this week was the fact that we brought bright, colourful crayons and dazzling stickers for the orphan children to make personalized bookmarks with. It was tricky keeping the bookmark papers clean since much of life here happens close to the dirt, but then, what’s a dirt smudge or two, eh? They thoroughly enjoyed the chance to do some artwork which gave me some great ideas for follow-up activities.
Karen and Kim cutting out and preparing the bookmarks for the kids.

One of the events we celebrated this week was (finally) delivering the Perkins Brailler to Mateus. Here he is, putting his own unique signature on his “proof of ownership” paper.

Using this method to write is quite the time-consuming, laborious process, and I’m sure the machine will be a much quicker way for him to take notes at school. Let’s just say he’s a pretty happy chappy right now :)

Others putting pen to paper this week were the pastors who came to attend one of several annual intensive seminars that we conduct here at the mission. These men come from near and far to receive training and training materials which they then return to their areas with and use to mentor other church leaders. We had a fairly full-house this time around, and our camp tents were filled to capacity. Dwight, Steve, Francois and Joao held classes in various places around the mission including under a temporarily suspended tarp outside the camp kitchen. Needless to say, we’re quite anxious for the day when these seminars can be held in the proposed training center!
Steve teaching his class with Dwight interpreting into Portuguese.

This class was held in the mission office.
For my session on preventive health, I used smooth stones from the river bed and some decorative marbles to demonstrate the adage that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. It was great fun.
This class took place under the makeshift tarp by the camp kitchen. Here’s Kim, my personal pharmacist—doing up packets of Tylenol, vitamins, etc. for the pastors this week. And who should be overseeing the whole operation, but Les, on her head! (Les may be re-named “Leslie” since Kim sort of figures the chameleon is a she rather than a he.)

Today, we took a brief break from our busy schedule to go celebrate Dwight’s birthday (it’s a bit early—but we will all be travelling next week). Tomorrow, the graduation ceremony will be held for those pastors who have now completed their studies after several years of diligent work. It will be a fine day, and we are expecting some of our local governmental VIP’s to join in our festivities. There are a few more very busy days in store for us next week, then we head to the beach with our family to catch a bit of R & R. We’ll be there on Dwight’s actual birthday, so there is more celebration in store! The sticker Kim placed on Mushu’s head said it quite well...Party on. :)

Waiting

Had I set my camera on “forced flash” for the shot just before this one, it would have been perfect. I would have caught Dwight, my dad and the gentleman behind them reading their newspapers while lined up at O.R. Tambo Airport in Johannesburg. As it was, I got dad tucking his newspaper away. Anyway, you get the point. A boring wait in a long line up. At least the news in the papers was captivating, what with the whole Zimbabwean saga unfolding as it is (http://uk.news.yahoo.com/skynews/20080704/twl-un-call-for-action-on-zimbabwe-3fd0ae9.html).

Dad, thanks for being such a bold and willing soul, coming to serve out here and facing the challenges of the Mozambican bush AND your daughter’s cooking :P

After seeing dad off and getting some business done in Joburg, we returned to Nelspruit to do some power shopping for building supplies and other business before heading home. But first, we thought we’d try to squeeze in a few days break at a nearby park to get some much-needed R&R. I guess it wasn’t meant to be since Kruger Park accommodations were booked solid. We went for the next-best option: a few days doing business at a slow pace. For the following 3 wonderful days, we didn’t rush up in the morning and hit the ground running. That is the norm when we come to “civilization”. Rather, we began our mornings at a leisurely pace, then took our time getting to the paint shops, tile centres, building warehouses, farmer’s co-op, vet, pharmacy, post office, bank, office supply stores, etc.

"Taking time" in traffic...

We have a number of construction projects underway at the mission in Mozambique, but two major ones on our minds right now are the main mission (“our”) house, and the training centre. Both of these need decisions, one sooner than the other thankfully, regarding finishing details like flooring, paint colour, light fixtures, and so on. And if there weren’t quite so many great options out there, decision making would be much easier. As it was, it took literally hours to look at, price, compare, and decide something about every item on our extensive shopping list!

One of the cartloads of supplies we picked up this week.



At the end of each shopping day the number of bags and boxes of goods, waiting patiently by the door to be loaded for our return trip, increased.

Among the maze of packages is this Perkins Brailler (a Braille typewriter).

Picking up this machine in Joburg was one of the highlights of my week because I know the compassion with which it was given, and the immense gratitude with which it will be received. It is earmarked for a blind young man (click here for link to story) who desperately wants finish school, but who is having a hard time keeping up with note-taking in a normal classroom setting. I’ll try to get a good shot of his initial reaction when he’s presented with the Brailler. It should be priceless. IF I remember to set my camera on “forced flash”, that is.

Just Google It

A few weeks ago, our main health post received an odd looking “sterilizer” pot. The two Socorristas (Health Workers) were quite excited about this new sterilizer but they weren’t sure how to use it. “You need to see it, Senhora,” they said, “then you can tell us how to use it.” I needed to go cover the shelves and tables with plastic later anyway, so that would be a good time to see the new item. We worked together to cover the wooden table first with cloth, then with the clear plastic. In the end were quite pleased with the result, and it will certainly be easier to disinfect than varnished wood! As we replaced medicine bottles on the table again we got busy discussing drug dosages and liquid concentrations and I nearly forgot all about the new sterilizer until I was halfway out the door. “Oh, hey, that new pot! Let’s have a quick look at it before I go.” They proudly pulled this shiny item out of its box for me to see.

“Some new instruments came with it: kidney basins and forceps” they said smiling wide. That was great news. But... I’d never seen a sterilizer pot/autoclave that looked like this. Actually, I’d never seen a small one in my life before! Any hospital I’ve ever worked in used huge, commercial sized electric ones. I was at a complete loss to know how to operate this odd item. I assumed that the clamps on the lid and on the side metal sheet were for sealing off the unit to create pressure inside. There were no gauges, dials or rubber rings though.

“So, did it happen to come with a user’s manual??” I asked hopefully.
“No. Nothing. It just came like that.”
“Hm. I’ll have to go home and google this!”

They don’t have computers and certainly not internet (yet), so I tried to briefly explain internet and google. Have you ever tried that before? Explaining something to someone who has no idea what you’re talking about? I’m sure I sounded like a raging lunatic. “First, you use a computer like the one in the mission office. Then, there’s a system for getting information from a place where other people put it, also using computers. It’s sort of like the radio you know? You can get text and photos and sound, but with a radio you only get sound. (I should have stopped after the first sentence. Things just got worse after that.) It’s like a library, but, you don’t go there. The information gets put into this sort of library, then comes to us from outer space through a dish, a satellite...” (note to self: next time, JUST google it). I’m sure they were quite lost with my weak explanation of internet and google, but they nodded politely anyway. Using a pot had never been so complicated before!

I went straight home and spent more time that I care to admit googling “autoclave manual stove top pressure-cooker type sterilizer”. I even threw in “Africa” and “rural health post” in for good measure. Of all the pages I searched, this was the most basic model I found online.

This was a little disconcerting, especially since the one clamp that was tack welded on the side is already broken on our “new” pot. I told the socorristas that for now, we’ll just keep it in its box and use cold sterilization methods for our dressing instruments.

Last Saturday, this young man came to speak to us. The mission sponsored him for a year to attend a special school for the blind where he learned to read and write in Braille. He has since returned home and is in a regular school now. But he has faced a few challenges, as you can well imagine. A few months ago, he requested a radio so he could know what time it was so he wouldn’t be late for school. An alarm clock is not quite as helpful as a radio since you usually have to set and check clocks. Radios just need new batteries from time to time. This week, he came to ask for assistance with a Braille typewriter. He’s been taking notes in class using his Braille tablet, but it’s too slow a process for him to be able to keep up with the teacher. Here he’s taking Dwight’s phone number, a process that took several minutes. We told him we would do what we could to help him find a Braille typewriter. A first good step would be to conduct a search using google to assess costs, etc. But I didn’t mention googling or internet because that would take me down a path I didn’t care to go again. Just google it.

Our week was much fuller than this, of course, so I’ll just leave you with a few more pictures before I close. Dad and Dwight doing some measuring on the old farm’s entrance road. We need a culvert like this one at the new farm to divert the huge volume of water we get flooded with during torrential downpours in the rainy season. Me getting medical boxes ready for the student nurses from Prairie who are due to arrive here at the beginning of June for a 2 ½ week practicum. It’s great to have the surplus of supplies left by the previous nursing team. Thank you USASK nursing program and those who sponsored them!

Until next time.